


Spelling Dominic

by ella_minnow



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-16
Updated: 2012-06-16
Packaged: 2017-11-07 21:38:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ella_minnow/pseuds/ella_minnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Don't worry," she tries to comfort him from half the world away.  "He'll pull through.  A little while in the hospital and he'll be as good as--"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spelling Dominic

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in the [Lotripping Zine](http://lotripping.livejournal.com/) in 09/2004. Thanks to mcee for performing her usual hand-holding and beta duties in magnificent fashion.

**1.**

Dom watches as Billy bends over the pool table, setting his legs and lining up his shot. From the low stool next to the phone in the kitchen, Dom can only see a little of the living room: the arm of the futon couch, the fringe on the floor rug, and one gleaming wood and green felt edge of the pool table. The denim of Billy's oldest jeans stretch and strain over his arse and Dom is just waiting for the day when the white line of wear finally splits open.

The crackle and echo of a very long distance phone call is like white noise and until his mother speaks again, Dom all but forgets the receiver he holds in a white-knuckled grip against his ear.

"Dominic? Are you still there?"

Dom hmms noncommittally.

"Don't worry," she tries to comfort him from half the world away. "He'll pull through. A little while in the hospital and he'll be as good as--"

The snick-clatter of Billy's shot drowns out the anything else she might have said.

 

**2.**

Of all the people Dom could have ended up sharing the little beach house with, he's glad he's sharing it with Billy. Sean would be busy missing his family and Elijah doesn't do well in confined spaces.

Billy, though. Billy is comfortable and easy and of all the people Dom could have ended up with, he's glad he's ended up with Billy.

When Dom stumbles into the still-dark kitchen in the morning, Billy hands him a cup of strong tea and doesn't ask him about the dark hollows beneath his eyes. They don't talk in the car on the way to the set and when they settle in for feet, Billy grabs the book he's been reading from where it lies face-down on the makeup counter and settles back with his second cup of tea of the morning. Dom watches the makeup people painstakingly poke individual strands of hair into the tops of his hobbit feet, shuddering at the sight of needles moving in and out of the too-real looking flesh.

During their lunch break, Dom ducks right as everyone else heads left towards the meal tent, his mobile in hand.

His mother answers on the first ring.

"How is he?"

"Doing well. In a bit of a mood -- you know how he hates being sick. He hates having to depend on other people to do things for him."

"But he's feeling better?"

"Yes. And the doctor says he's doing fine, all things considered. He's going to have to do some things differently when he gets out of the hospital. Eat better and get more exercise and the like. The usual sort of thing."

Dom can't decide if she's lying to him or not. "Good. Okay."

There's a pause, then, "Your brother's here, and the kids. It's cheered him up some."

He's not sure what to say to that. "That's good. That's -- I have to go, break's almost over. My love to Dad, yeah?"

He remembers only after he's hung up that it's midnight in England.

When Dom sets his lunch plate down and slips into the seat next to Billy, Billy doesn't ask him where he's been.

 

**3.**

"My father's had a heart attack."

Dom doesn't turn to look at Billy as he says it, keeping his gaze locked on the slowly lightening horizon instead. In all honesty, he's not entirely sure he _could_ turn away, even if he wanted to. His limbs feel heavy and numb. He's not sure how long he's been sitting curled into a deck chair, waiting for daylight wrapped in the blanket he dragged with him from his bed. Hours, at least. Days. Maybe forever, and he hasn't slept in twice that long.

There's a rustle of movement then Billy is in front of him, kneeling on the rough wooden surface of the deck. His bathrobe gapes open as he leans to set aside the steaming mugs of tea he's carrying, revealing a strip of bare chest and the thin boxer shorts he favours for sleepwear. When he leans back and grasps Dom's forearms, the sudden contact is enough to make Dom jump. 

His stomach twists, lurches, jumps into his throat and Dom has to work very, very hard not to vomit.

Until now, until Dom told someone about it, his father's heart attack hadn't been real. It had been caught in a reality time zone, trapped and jetlagged somewhere between England and New Zealand. But, now. Now it's real and the weight of it is too much and all Dom can hope is that he makes it to the railing in time, because he'd much rather throw up in the bushes than all over Billy's robe.

He swallows convulsively and shudders.

"Dom."

The sun is coming up, finally, and the light slipping over the edge of the ocean behind Billy casts his face into shadow. The urge to throw up recedes a little as the feel of Billy's fingers tucked into the dip beneath his elbow sinks in to his consciousness. They're warm from the mug of tea and Dom hadn't realised how cold he'd become, sitting out all night in nothing but a t-shirt and boxer shorts and the blanket.

Billy leans in until the sun is eclipsed behind his head and Dom can make out his eyes and the sympathetic twist of his mouth again. Billy hasn't shaved yet and the stubble on his cheeks and jaw catches the light.

"Dom."

Dom sometimes wonders if he couldn't get lost in the angles of Billy's face.

The sound of the phone from the kitchen is a reminder and Billy's hold is easily broken as Dom jumps up to answer it. He hopes his mother can't hear the guilt, irrational and inescapable, in his voice when he picks up the receiver.

 

**4.**

In his dreams, Dom remembers things he didn't even know he'd forgotten.

He's young again and sitting with his brother in the family's car. He doesn't know how young he is, only that he's small, with short legs and short arms and a narrow little body that isn't at all squished from being in the narrow backseat. He doesn't know where they're going, either, only that they've been in the car for a long time already. Long enough for his brother to stop talking to him and start reading the book he brought along instead, long enough for even the conversation between his mother and father to lapse into silence.

"I'm bored."

Dom's mother twists to peer at him through the space between the front seats. "What's that?"

"I'm bored." He's a little petulant. The grown-up part of Dom's brain that's separate from that of his younger dream-self can hear the threat of a fit in his voice.

"Would you like me to put a book tape in?"

At that, Dom's brother looks up from his book. "Mom! I’m _reading_!"

She frowns at him from around the headrest. " _Matt_."

Matt rolls his eyes and huffs and slumps against the seat, making a show of marking his place in the book and shoving it into the space between the seat and the side of the car door. He turns to stare out the window, lips twisted into something that rides the line between affected exasperation and honest pout.

Dom watches him uneasily, knowing that the rest of the trip isn't going to be much fun if Matt decides to be in a snit, but he's soon distracted by the sound of his mother rifling through the tapes in the glove box. She hmms, satisfied, when she finds the tape she was looking for, slipping it from the case and into the tape deck. They hadn't rewound it the last time they'd listened to it, apparently, because it starts up in the middle of a sentence.

\-- _no longer looking at Bilbo; a shadow seemed to have fallen between them, and through it he found himself eyeing a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands_ \--

Dom's father snorts and glances away from the road briefly. " _That_ again?"

"He loves it," his mother replies, twisting a little further to smile at Dom.

Dom grins and is about to reply when --

\-- the phone rings.

Peeling his face away from the spreading drool spot on his pillow case, Dom fumbles for the phone on his dresser, desperate, somewhere in the back of his mind, to catch it before the next ring, before it wakes Billy up, too.

"Yeah," he mutters past a sleep-thick tongue when he finally gets the phone to his ear.

"Dominic?"

"Yeah, Mum."

"Did I wake you?"

"Yeah."

 

**5.**

Not sleeping is taking its toll on Dom. His days are beginning to bleed together, to trail into each other at either end and blur in the middle. He can't focus, can't think, and, judging from the increasingly tense look on Peter's face at every failed take, it shows.

When his foot comes loose in the middle of the first scene of the day that is actually _working_ , the first take of the day wherein Dom has yet to forget a line or miss a cue or stand in the wrong place or forget that he's Merry instead of Dom, it's too much. Dom's snarled curse is drowned out by Pete's "Let's call it a day, come back to it fresh in the morning."

Stomping theatrically with a foam foot flapping loose from your heel is difficult, but Dom manages to do it, all the way back to the makeup trailer. He doesn't swear at the makeup team, but it's a close thing. He doesn't say anything at all, just sits and watches them chip away at what glue on the foot that didn't let go.

"Dom." Billy's still in costume. The curls falling over his forehead make him look the youngest hobbit rather than the oldest hobbit actor. His eyes and his face are his own, though, adult and concerned. "Why didn't you tell Pete?"

"Tell Pete what?"

Billy's gaze is steady. Dom glares back, defiantly angry over nothing in particular.

"Don't. Don't screw around." Billy's tone leaves no room for evasion and Dom feels trapped.

"I didn't feel like it." Dom shifts his glare to the man who's nearly got the foam hobbit foot free and who looks like he would like to be absolutely anywhere but where he is right at this moment.

"Well, I told him. He said to say—"

Dom interrupts again. "What?" It's more snarl than question.

"He said—"

"Fuck off, I heard you. You had no right–"

"I had every right. He has every right to know."

"You didn't. I can't fucking believe you told him. I wouldn't have told – if I'd wanted the whole fucking world to know, I'd've taken a fucking ad out."

Dom realises right away, angry though he is, that the sarcasm is a mistake. Billy's angry, too, now, his not-Pippin eyes dark and flat with it, his not-Pippin hands curled into fists at his side. His voice, when he speaks again, is low and tight. "He has every right to know, Dom."

There's still bits of foam and glue sticking to the skin of Dom's foot as he, for the second time in an hour, stomps away. It's not until he's halfway to the parking lot that he realises he's still wearing his hobbit pants. The keys to his car are in the pocket of his jacket, though, and he doesn't go back.

 

**6.**

It's a game Dom's played for years. He remembers doing it on summer holiday visits back to the U.K., to see his mother's brother or his father's best mate from school. He remembers fumbling with his English, the curves of it feeling strange on his tongue after German's angles. He remembers hating his brother for switching back and forth with such ease, English to German to English and back, and for laughing at Dom when he choked on his words. He remembers leaving Matt and his cousins and their perfect English at the top of the beach and going down to the ocean's edge. He remembers spending hours, or what felt like hours, standing just out of reach of the tide, daring the grey waves to come and get him, playing chicken with the ocean.

England during the day is usually colder than New Zealand at night, but he's still glad he went to the beach house to change out of the hobbit pants and into jeans. He was in and out and gone probably before Billy even got his feet off back on the set. Out and gone and driving around for hours, utterly aimlessly, desperately not thinking about anything at all. But running away only works for so long before you have to slow down and turn around and head back. It's a lesson Dom learned on those afternoons on English beaches, but he'd forgotten it, somehow, in the years since.

When Dom turns into the drive, the lights of the beach house are on, a bright spot in the deepening dark. Knowing that Billy must have heard him pull up but hoping, desperately, that he hasn't, Dom eases the car door open and closed as quietly as he can manage.

He's not ready to face Billy yet.

Quickly, before Billy has the chance to come out and catch him, Dom slips away, around the sound of the house and down, to the ocean.

He leaves his shoes at the line where grass gives way to beach and wades barefoot through soft sand that's still warm even hours after the sun has gone down. He stops when the sand beneath his feet goes from dry and loose and warm to damp and packed and cool.

It's too dark to play the game properly, to measure the reach of the waves and place himself just beyond it. The little bit of light that reaches the beach from the house spills to an end long before the edge of the water. Dom is blind, judging by feel and sound and smell alone.

There's a rush, a gathering breath, than the crash of a wave hitting the shore. Spray dusts across the tops of his bare feet and the taste of salt at the back of his throat redoubles, but the wave itself peters out before it reaches him. Dom bares his teeth at the ocean in a grimly triumphant smile. He laughs out loud, a sharp, humourless bark, when a second wave spends itself before reaching him.

Somewhere on the other side of all this water is his family. Dom imagines them huddled together, shoulder to shoulder, around the hospital bed in which his father lies. He thinks that he might hate them a little. Guilt rides hard on the heels of that thought and, as a third wave licks at his toes before retreating, he tries to let the sudden, irrational hatred go.

"Dom?"

Dom starts violently and spins around. Billy stands silhouetted against the house lights. While Dom was lost in his thoughts, in the rhythm of water meeting land, Billy had found him, had come to within a few feet of him without Dom noticing.

"Your mother called," Billy says. His voice is low and Dom, although he's listening for it, can't hear any trace of anger in it. "You left your mobile in the trailer. There's nothing -- she was only calling to check in with you."

Dom nods. Billy takes a step closer, then stops. The ocean sighs into the space between them.

Billy's patience for silences is infinite. Dom's is limited.

"I'm sorry." The last syllable breaks and Dom clears his throat before going on. "I'm sorry for–"

Billy is shaking his head and Dom's voice dies on the back of his tongue. Another step brings Billy into Dom's space. The packed sand beneath Dom's toes buckles, pushed forward beneath the weight of Billy's sneakered feet. He reaches out to curl his hands over Dom's shoulders, resting his thumbs against the angle of Dom's collarbones.

"It's fine," he says.

When Dom would have tried again, would have pushed through Billy's objections to apologise properly, he finds himself being reeled in by the hands on his shoulders until he's tucked against Billy's chest.

Billy's lips are warm when they press against his. It's the warmth more than the kiss that surprises Dom, although he's not sure why that should be. Billy is always warm and the kiss is like all first kisses, a little awkward and too wet around the edges, but thrilling nonetheless.

Dom laughs against Billy's lips as ocean water surges around his ankles and calves, splashing up to soak Dom's jeans to the thigh. 

 

**7.**

Calling inter-continentally should be old hat by now, but Dom has to start over twice before he finally manages to get his mother's number right. He lies back on the bed, pushing into the curve of Billy's body while the phone rings, comforted by the fingers that immediately begin toying with the hair at the base of his neck.

The ringing cuts off with a hollow click. "Dom?"

"Mum. I'm sorry I missed your call earlier."

She shakes off his apology with a dismissive noise. "It's nothing. Listen, your father's right here. I'm passing you over."

There's a brief fumble, the sound of fingers sliding over the mouthpiece, then, "Dom?"

Dom sits up, away from the distracting fingers in his hair. "Dad?"

"Dom. It's good to hear from you."

"I– How are you? How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine. I'm going home tomorrow." The relief in his father's voice is almost comical and under other circumstances, Dom might have laughed. As it is, he half expects the plastic of the receiver to crack and collapse beneath his white-knuckled grip. He can't stop either the grin that threatens to split his face in two or the tears that are gathering at the corners of his eyes.

"That's great. That's wonderful. I -- it's good to hear your voice."

End.


End file.
